May 21
2006

(SPOILER)The Hollywood Reporter reviews 'Southland Tales'.
Now that you've seen the pics of Sarah at Cannes, read the review of her new movie. Phrases like "the will to live is lost in the first reel" may give you a hint of what's in store. Cinematical.com is more damming in its assessment of the movie "failed ambitions and vain pretensions".

If people see any more reviews, please post them in this thread. I'd be quite interested to read a positive review of the movie.

Remember, Donnie Darko didn't review too well at Sundance. I'm not sure you can base opinions solely on a few reviews by people watching the film at 8.30am. It'll also almost certainly be trimmed down prior to release.

Here and here seem more willing to admit that the reaction was "mixed" rather than all bad. No booing which the critics at Cannes are unafraid to do, and even applause.

Here's my tentative translation of a small French audio review, taken from the French newsmagazine L'Express site.
Link (audioblog):
http://www.lexpress.fr/mag/arts/dossier/cannes/home.asp?id=515712

Cheer up !
This one is rather positive. But please take note all of the review is not focused solely on ST, it's about the average "buzz" in Cannes (and ST has been strongly buzzed about, as you know).

ST is all over the place.

With actors who could have been a collective disaster, but after all they are very good.

It’s full of genuine cinematographic ideas.
The movie is mind bending, not only in regards to the overall direction, but also in regards to Kelly’s references, such as Aldrich’s Kiss me deadly, similarly Apocalypse-themed.

After the screening, most of the viewers were unimpressed, or very hostile. But the funny thing is that the most hostile were the ones I swear I saw sleeping for two thirds of the movie duration. Maybe they slept too badly.

Simon, you can read the Empire Online review here. Unfortunatly it says much the same as the rest. Unfortunatly it ends with the sentence "Here's hoping the Cannes reaction will prompt a merciless re-edit; even so, though – and it chokes us up to even be typing this – it's hard to see what can be salvaged."

There is a clip from the film featuring SMG here. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page.

A one-minute clip doesn't really tell us much about a film lasting 160 minutes, but I liked it. The initial negative reviews are obviously disappointing, although I am not entirely surprised. They certainly haven't dampened my enthusiasm to see the film. If anything, I'm even more intrigued and at the end of the day I am really only interested in what I think, not what a bunch of journalists and film reviewers think.

Edited to say that Impossible posted the same link while I was doing mine - I was just a little bit too slow due to my technology traumas!

160 minutes is awfully long so it will really be a DVD rental for me. But I'll quite happily watch Sarah in anything (including that flick where she was a diner waitress). Thanks for the Empire link Jona.

Simon: I wouldn't worry about the 160 mins. I don't think there was ever a real chance that the final theatrical version would be that long. I think it was always in for a half hour trim. That again fits in with the Donnie Darko at Sundance example.

Dont pay too much atention to reviews if you like something about the film. Reviews should only help if you are on the negative side about a film because os some reason and dont know what to do, give ita chance. Its the last front to take a decision you already half made. Films should be judged by oneself. Just a point of view.
By the way. Flow is a novel, not a short story. Its not that i want to show off. I just love Philip too much to let a slip of memory go unpunished. Call it irrational admiration.

I found Donnie Darko to be depressing. It's plotline involved circular logic. It's humor was dark and its soap opera like plot was contrived and insular. Starts with a guy waking up on a street and approaches this as if it were of such extreme significance as to echo through the rest of the film. You're trying to figure out why the guy wakes up in the middle of the street. Annoying. By the time we got the the last reel I really wished I were watching reruns of Starsky and Hutch or something.

Southland Tales isn't even on my DVD maybe list. Now that I know SMG is involved, I might have to put it on the maybe list, but I have difficulty imagining SMG as a porn star. Not cuz I can't not see her as the slayer. I CAN as a matter of fact, but I don't see SMG as a believable porn star. That's like trying to imagine Demi Moore as a soldier in the military, or Jodi Foster as a heterosexual. It's just asking too much to stretch the imagination in that direction.

"That's like trying to imagine Demi Moore as a soldier in the military, or Jodi Foster as a heterosexual."

LOL, oh that is so wrong. And yet, I am still laughing. Btw, both of those ideas are prevelant in hollywood movies...just food for thought.

On a third viewing of Donnie Darko, I liked it. It did take three viewings though, and the only reason I did was because my friend loves those type of movies. Who knows, maybe ST was just too difficult to understand?

ST polarizes; it's a hate it or love it thing. It will open wild discussions and it has to be watched several times. That's defenitely what Cannes is looking for. (This is a very free translation of the above mentioned comment),

Woah. I really liked the Gellar clip. Or maybe I just like hearing SMG say the "f" word. I dunno.

I'll be seeing it despite the reviews. It's just so darn interesting to read about! After I found Krista Now's webpage, I ordered the prequels. I'm still much more interested than not, despite the reviews. I'm really hoping it was just "too difficult" for some folks to "get".

gossi, I also saw The DaVinci Code yesterday. While I completely understand why reviews were mixed, I'm surprised by the 19% on Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn't THAT bad. It was just really average and okay -- not heinous. I knew going in it wouldn't thrill me but sheesh! 19%? That's harsh. For anyone who's wild about Tom Hanks -- not his greatest work ever. Maybe the film is a letdown for novel fanatics. For those who thought it was kinda alright, the film kinda works.

When does this movie go on general release in the States? I'll be watching the box office performance with great interest. Personally I don't think it's going to do well in America but it may have legs in Europe.

Simon, I suspect you are right. The most hostile of the reviews so far seem to be coming from the American critics, who are complaining that the film is far too complicated and over-ambitious and ends up being a sprawling mess. The European critics, on the other hand, appear to be generally more favourably inclined towards it. This is probably not all that surprising, although I still ramain convinced that American audiences are perfectly capable of dealing with complex or challanging films.

I would not expect any great showing at the box office, no more so than the two versions of 'Donnie Darko', which I believe had a combined gross of less than $3 million in the US. It wouldn't surprise me if the film is given a rather limited run.

It still sounds like a potentially great film to me, and even if it isn't I am still looking forward to seeing it with eager anticipation.

Donnie Darko did a little over a half million $ domestically, about $1.2 million wordwide. I'd like to know what it did on DVD. I suspect it's cult status reputation won't do much for ST's box office, though. I hope Im wrong; I'd like to see SMG have a huge hit.

And when your first film grosses so little with a reported production budget of $6 million, how do you get financing for the next one?

Hmmm. I was absolutely certain this was going to be a good movie. I'm still holding out judgement untill I see reviews of the actual theatrical release and untill I've seen (and reviewed) it myself.

I absolutely adore Donnie Darko. It's a movie that works fine if you embrace the movie logic and, more importantly, it rings true emotionally. And I have to say: even the bad reviews make ST sound intruiging. I'm going to be seeing this at the theatre for sure. I'll just be lowering my high expectations somewhat.

And when your first film grosses so little with a reported production budget of $6 million, how do you get financing for the next one?

That might be a question for James Toback since he has been doing exactly that for the best part of thirty years. I love his films and say all the more power to him and anyone else who can do that.

I recall reading that the box office now only accounts for a very small percentage of the total potential financial take, so I guess if the budget is small enough the risks are equally small. There is, after all, a huge difference between a $6 million dollar production budget and, say, a $50 million budget.

Important to remember the budget for this one. Between 15 and 20 million. So between the hardcore fans of the cast (there are so many people with good fanbases involved including Kevin Smith, Justin Timberlake and the leading castmembers of course) and the director, it shouldn't struggle to make back the budget and head into a profit. Even if it requires the DVD release to do that. The US may not be a big contributor which would be a shame.

Universal co-paid for the development of the film, but haven't officially decided on distribution yet. However, I'm hearing about August/September (US).

To be honest, thinking about it, if reviewers had come out of a Richard Kelly film going "It was really well structured, easy to follow and fun!" I'd be like 'Oh, that'll be shit, then'.

He makes films designed to make you think about the topics in question. If you can't be arsed to think about it, then you won't like this - this often accounts for people who don't like Donnie Darko.

Still, it might just be crap. Who knows? I can say the production budget was only $20m - half the usual nowadays - so it won't have to do massive numbers at the box office. I suspect it'll do really well on the cult DVD market, also.

As an aside, on The Da Vinci Code, that has taken $245m+ this weekend at the box office, making it the largest opening this year to date, and there's every chance it'll run on to be one of the highest grossing films ever made. Or, in other words, over the last year I've seen more evidence that any press has more effect than critical reviews - in many respects, critical reviews are now getting irelevant, and that must piss critics off.

UIP I believe were the ones who were more directly involved in backing the film, and they do have the international rights for the most part. I might have picked that up wrongly somewhere though. I'm going on memory. I'm never too sure how closely linked the different parts of Universal are.

Simon, according to the studio 50% of the US audience hadn't read the book. I've just seen the final stats - it's taken the largest international opening for a movie ever.

Regarding Donnie Darko - the budget was closer to 4 million, and it had international openings (abeit limited) and huge DVD sales - particularly high in the UK. That movie made the companies involved millions.

I must admit I'm at the stage where the opinions of critics mean absolutely nothing. I try not to read any reviews for stuff I'm looking forward to, I prefer to make up my own mind from seeing it first hand.

Donnie Darko is a film that polarises opinion. Personally, I loved both incarnations. I had no doubt Southland Tales would get a similar response, and frankly the sort of comments I'm reading in these reviews actually raise my interest in it further.

(Sorry. That was me attempting to type "La-la-la! I'm not listening!" with my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed. (Randomly mashing the keyboard with my elbows, basically...))

I don't like Cannes critics. Landing that gig turns normally sensible journalists into gibbering fools. They're just all drunk and on holiday and suffering from sunstroke. And they have to watch film after film after film, day after day after day. It makes them mean and overly judgemental and.. wrong. I don't like critics in general, actually. I'm the only critic whose opinion I value and trust. In fact, I FART in critics' general direction! (Unless they're me, in which case I just.. fart.) Their mothers are hamsters and their fathers.. grow elderberries and.. Uh, I had a point.. what was it? Something about having a brain and a pair of eyes of my own and I'm going to see the film regardless and ner-ner-ner-ner-ner I don't care? Something like that. And something about farting hamsters...

I enjoyed Donnie Darko when I first saw it in the theater, but I didn't quite grasp all it had to offer right away. I walked away from the theater that night with the feeling that it was only hinting at a deeper message but I didn't know what that was. I thought it had only brushed the surface of something much deeper that it could have explored.

Well, I ended up downloading it and watching it again. I liked it much better the second time. Then I went to the website and deciphered the puzzle and watched the movie a couple more times and everytime I watched it I was able to understand the hidden depths.

Donnie Darko is a complex film, and that's the kind that I like. Every time I saw it I found something new to marvel at. Only one other movie has topped that for me, and that's Memento, which is still a mystery for me every time I see it but only because of its reverse time structure.

If Southland Tales needs to be watched more than once to understand it, then it's my kind of movie. Donnie Darko was the work of a genius, and I'm going to follow that genius wherever he goes. He probably won't ever make the Roberta Sparrow prequel I've been wanting since my Donnie Darko obsession, but maybe someday he'll move to TV, which is what all the cool directors are doing nowadays.

Yes, I have some high hopes for ST, but these reviews only increase my anticipation. I'll be seeing this one in the theater, and if I don't quite "get it", I'll go again.

I liked the film, although it is so inoffensive it's _nearly_ offensive, if that makes sense. Will be interesting to see what the 2nd week drop is like. I will say the age range in my cinema was impressive, so I think this will do well on DVD in the longterm.

Well, I was hoping this one to be good (especially for Sarah).
But even the bad reviews look like good ones for me. Those angry reviews don't say anything bad about the movie to me, on the contrary, they say to me that the movie made them to feel uncomfortable, and definitively, it provoked them.

Anyway, every movie in the Official Competiton has to pass some filters, right? So the movie must have something.

Here's a link to the clip from the cannes site on youtube, in case anyone else was having trouble getting their browser to play the clips on the cannes site.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9FU_AOZKFk
Agreed- quite funny. Agreed as well that the fact that a sizeable portion of critics didn't like it, esp. at that length and that screening time, shouldn't lead to any negative conclusions for us. For me, it's expected and, probably, a Good Thing.

I'd hate to see the two films I was most looking forward to bomb (I'm talking box office) in consecutive years. Although I am comforted by the fact the last film that got an extremely negative reaction at Cannes, The Brown Bunny, turned out to be one of the most effecting movies I've seen in the last few years.

Ah, I'm sad that Geoff Andrews of TO didn't like it - I often (but not always) agree with his take on stuff. Additionally, Brit crits are useful bellwethers because their position is, generally speaking, somewhere between the more mainstream US press and the more esoteric Euro crits.

Even the most stout-hearted defender must agree that overtly negative reviews can't be spun into gold. OTOH, the substance of these reviews is quite interesting. Many focus on the need to reedit - which can be done, - and many others deplore RK's "pretension" and "overly-ambitious" story, which are incredibly subjective readings. To be fair, it does sound like he went a bit too far, but there might be a "bijou," to quote the France 2 summary, underneath the "boue" after all . . . In any case, I am definitely one who will go see it. If it makes it to US theaters, that is.

Better over- than under-ambitious in my book (love love love Brazil, for example, which many crits accused of much the same thing), and better ST than a safe pablum-filled Da Vinci Code. I did read the book, and it captured me enough to finish within 24 hours or so, at which point I wondered how Dan Brown did it, since his style is pedestrian and the non-mystery thriller sections lack any passion whatsoever.

E.g. End of chapter: "The gendarmes were closing in. The angular and erudite American professor and his jolie and brilliant brunette companion wondered how on earth they would escape . . . " Start of next chapter: "The pair hid behind the door while the flics ran past. 'Quick, let's go talk about the Priory of Sion for another 15 pages while the cops puzzle over what happened . . .'".

And because the only point of interest for me was the religious-art history-conspiracy theory mish-mosh, I have absolutely zero interest in going to see the movie. Long expositions don't work all that well on screen, in my experience.

By worldwide, I was referring to domestic gross + international gross. Da Vinci did outgross Ep. III internationally (I think it's something like $147m to $145m), but Sith's $50 million opening day and $108 million opening weekend tipped the worldwide balance.

There is another brief clip from the film (this one featuring The Rock, SMG and Seann William Scott) at the Le Figaro website here. You need to scroll down the page until you get to the Festival de Cannes 2006 box. The clip is part of what looks like an entertainment news article from French TV. I must give credit to olly at richardkelly.net for finding this.

The reviews continue to be very mixed. The American and British critics have largely been extremely hostile towards the film, whereas the French critics seem to be much more generous of spirit. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, a film critic who I must admit I don't have much time for, described both The Rock and SMG as "howlingly awful in every scene."

At present it seems as if the film does not have an American distributer and there is talk that without very extensive re-editing it might not get one. If the film does undergo huge cuts I hope the version shown at Cannes at least gets a DVD release, simply because I'd like to see it as Richard Kelly intended. It might well be a dreadful film but I'd like to have the chance to judge it for myself.

DSB: I think talk of the lack of distributor and not being released theatrically is greatly exaggerated in this case. The film doesn't have to make huge amounts to make money, and with the cast it has? I can't see it doing that badly regardless of these reviews.

The European reviews aren't just "better" than the US/UK ones. I'd go so far as to say they're pretty positive. As well as the French, the Spanish are apparently receiving it well, and have heard positive things from others in other countries.

SMG wasn't howlingly awful by any means in the one clip I watched (the restaurant table scene) - I thought she did a great job of projecting the nervy but brittle mentality of a porn star, and I liked her phrasing. She was playing neither Buffy nor the Bot, but someone quite different.

Simon said:
"160 minutes is awfully long so it will really be a DVD rental for me."

Don't like sitting in the theatre for long films? It would sadden me to know you deprived yourself of the Rings trilogy, the King Kong remake, and other lengthy big screen-worthy flicks I can't think of right now.

ZachsMind said:
"I found Donnie Darko to be depressing."

And? Depressing is a mark against a film?
I found much of it depressing too, but it also arguably had a good helping of bittersweet triumph and I was too wrapped up in how mindbending a lot of it was and how beautiful that final song was to get too sad over it. I rented it on DVD the week it came out having only read one fairly positive review and not having heard a lick of hype over it, so the whole thing was a huge surprise. Just never expected something like that from an indie flick (to be fair--an indie flick that was halfway financed and brought into being by Drew Barrymore's production company's help).

"Starts with a guy waking up on a street and approaches this as if it were of such extreme significance as to echo through the rest of the film. You're trying to figure out why the guy wakes up in the middle of the street. Annoying."

I've never heard from a viewer who was frustrated over being lead down that path by the film's narrative, but interesting interpretation all the same. It was actually pretty obvious after only twenty minutes in that Donnie was a sleepwalker and that it was probably due to Frank The Rabbit waking him up and then Donnie just flopping down once the informative trance ended. Sound more like you were annoyed at guessing wrong. Hey, that happens to me often enough when I'm trying to figure out a movie's mysteries well before it's finished, I'll go and follow details that really aren't clues and usually weren't even intended as red herrings. Being unintentionally duped by a film doesn't justify holding anything against it for that small reason.